Officials with McKeil Marine
and Heddle Marine Services say Sydney Harbour is ideally located to take
advantage of the growing need for tugboats, barges and ship repairs in the
Atlantic region.
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Mike Moore, regional manager
of commercial interests for Heddle Marine Service's East Division in Sydney,
stands on the deck of a barge that is being repurposed at the company's wharf
in Sydport Industrial Park. The barge was used to service the oil and gas
industry off Newfoundland, and will soon be used to service a mining company
after the steel and lumber are taken off the deck, to be replaced with another
configuration the client has requested. (TOM AYERS / Local Xpress)
|
SYDNEY — The wharf in
Sydport Industrial Park is busy and getting busier, with repairs, maintenance
and recycling of tug boats, barges and ships.
One activity that is not
happening — and can't happen due to the lack of infrastructure — is
shipbreaking, officials with McKeil Marine and Heddle Marine Services told
Local Xpress on Friday during a tour of the wharf and the vessels tied up
alongside.
"We are in marine
services," said Mike Moore, regional manager of commercial interests for
Heddle Marine's East Division. "We don't do shipbreaking.
"We're not involved in
any way with scrapping a vessel. What falls within our wheelhouse is ship
repair and ship maintenance."
McKeil, a related but
separate company, operates tugboats and barges, said company spokesman Jamie
Connors. It began leasing the Sydport wharf and property from Cape Breton
Regional Municipality in 2015 and has an option to buy it. Heddle followed
shortly after that.
The wharf is silhouetted
with a couple of cranes and is littered with lumber, aluminum, steel, a large
generator that Moore said could power the community of New Waterford, and wires
and cables.
It's also the home of the MV
Princess of Acadia, the former Digby ferry that is waiting to be scrapped.
Other working ships are at
the wharf for repairs, and the Arca 1, a former fuel supply barge from Montreal
that ran aground in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Breton in January, remains tied
up at the dock six months later.
A spokesman for Transport
Canada said in an email this week the Arca 1 can't leave port until the federal
agency is satisfied.
"The vessel remains
under detention while Transport Canada awaits information from the owner
indicating that the required corrective actions have been completed and its
propulsion equipment is operable, or other arrangements have been made to
safely move the vessel," Pierre Manoni wrote.
Several barges used in the
oil and gas industry off Newfoundland are also alongside the dock and are in
various states of recycling, which Moore was quick to point out is not the same
thing as shipbreaking.
Instead, the deck structures
— including shipping containers, or "sea cans" as they are called in
the business — are removed and the barges are then cleaned up and new
structures are added, depending on the needs of the client, said Moore.
For example, one of the
barges was used to move equipment in the oil and gas industry, and the deck is
being reconfigured to move different equipment for a mining company.
All kinds of equipment and
materials are also removed from the vessels and are inspected and reused or
recycled. Heddle Marine resells sea cans, fire extinguishers, scrap metal and
other materials removed from the barges.
"We don't scrap it and
throw it away," said Moore. "We reuse it."
Some of the materials are
used to manufacture ladders and gangways that connect the barges to each other
or to the dock, or other custom equipment the clients demand, he said.
Some of the lumber is reused
in new deck structures, and some will be donated to local organizations such as
the all-terrain vehicle club or the groups that maintain the Baille Ard and
Coxheath Hills trails.
Hazardous materials are also
removed and disposed of at the proper facilities, Moore said.
A spokesman for Marine
Recycling Corp., the company that won a federal tender to scrap the former
Digby ferry at a cost of $2.6 million, told Local Xpress this week that
shipbreaking in Sydney Harbour was a possibility, but that no decision had been
made yet.
Moore said Sydney Harbour
simply doesn't have the facilities or infrastructure required to cut up and
scrap a large ship. But it can be decommissioned and prepared for towing to
another facility with shipbreaking capabilities, such as the Marine Recycling
location in Ontario.
The MV Miner, a Great Lakes
barge that ran aground off Scatarie Island in 2011, was scrapped where it
landed and was budgeted to cost $12 million, but reportedly cost around $18
million, including the cost of containing the work site, removing hazardous
materials and restoring the environment after the ship was cut apart and the
metal was hauled away.
The Arca 1, a flat-bottomed
fuel barge powered by twin outboard motors that many observers say should never
have been allowed to head out into the open ocean, is still being detained in
port by Transport Canada. Moore said Heddle Marine was contracted by the owners
and their insurance company to prepare the vessel for moving, which is expected
to occur soon.
The masts and other tall
parts of the deck structure have been carefully cut down and secured, and the
hull has been outfitted so that a specially designed ship can attach straps and
lift the Arca 1 on board for transportation to Mexico, where the owners plan to
reattach the deck structures and put the fuel barge to use, he said.
Heddle has 25 employees
ranging in age from 22 to 67, he said, and most are Cape Bretoners who had been
working out of province but wanted to come home.
John Sullivan, the company's
occupational health and safety officer, said morale among the workers is very
high.
"I worked away from home
for 14 years and didn't realize how much I lost with family," he told
Local Xpress. "Now, I'm home. With the opportunity this company has given
me, I'm proud to be home."
Eight of the company's
workers are Indigenous, and under a deal with Nova Scotia Community College and
the Mi'kmaw Economic Benefits Office, trainees are given an opportunity to
learn skills and gain practical experience, said Moore.
"The only way we're
going to grow is to invest in people," he said.
A Whitney Pier native who
has worked in the financial services industry and in economic development,
Moore has heard recent questions and comments about the possibility of
shipbreaking in Sydport, and said he was happy to dispel that notion.
"We want to be open and
honest and transparent here," Moore said. "We're building work here
for our employees. We're actually trying to do something good for Cape
Breton."
Both McKeil and Heddle buy a
lot of supplies from local companies and employ Cape Bretoners as much as
possible, he said.
And while the oil and gas
sector in the Atlantic region is winding down, he said, there are plenty of
other opportunities for marine services locally, including the cruise ship
industry, Marine Atlantic, the Canadian Coast Guard and the Donkin mine.
Port facilities in Halifax,
Saint John, N.B. and St. John's, N.L., are all busy and there's room in the
market for services based in Sydney, which is also ideally located to pick up
some of the slack, said Moore.
"There's a lot of ships
that go past Cape Breton," he said. "Vessels are always going to
encounter emergency situations. Like your car, they'll have breakdowns or need
service. I really do believe we're going to continue to grow by leaps and
bounds."
Source: local
xpress. 15 July 2017
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